Proliferation of the Internet among consumers at the turn of the 21st century has created a tremendous market opportunity and expansion in e-commerce. An increasing number of consumers shop online for products and services as most offline businesses find Internet storefronts and service enablement as essential components of their business strategies.
Many consumers gain valuable insight into a variety of businesses available both online and offline by reading consumer reviews and ratings online. Some web services, including “Epinions.com,” specialize in company and product reviews by registered consumers to their websites. Some of these websites provide a compensation structure for the registered consumers reviewing certain types of products and companies. Most of the consumer rating systems use a simple star rating system or a numerical evaluation system which also displays reviewers' comments.
Search engines and internet portal sites provide another medium of presenting peer consumer reviews of corporate services and products to a searching consumer. Similar to web services specializing in consumer reviews, a simple star or numerical rating system is typically related to a particular service or a particular product displayed by a search engine or an Internet portal site, with commenting sections available for brief written reviews or comments by consumers.
However, conventional star rating systems and numerical rating systems do not take a searching consumer's personal tastes and background into account when displaying results of consumer-reviewed products and services. Furthermore, conventional star rating systems and numerical rating systems do not filter or quantitatively assess reviewers who may have substantially different tastes and background. Therefore, a searching consumer of products or services will appreciate a more personalized consumer to business matchmaking system and method which can quantify and assess correlations among a company offering products or services, consumers who have reviewed those products or services, and searching consumers looking for the reviewed products or services.